Canada’s Olympic bobsled champion has been known to push cars for a workout, usually because she’s in an isolated location with nothing else handy to push, or the push-track facilities in Calgary aren’t free.

“The bigger the better,” said Humphries — the human equivalent of a tow truck. “Well, not too big because then you can’t push it. But big vehicles are better.

“Sometimes you’re in the middle of a random place, you’re in Toronto for a media event, and you’re like: I need something just to do my 40 minutes of stuff. Grabbing a vehicle is easy, it’s heavy. I’ve got a BMW (5X) at home, so it’s fairly weighty, it works good.”

The 27-year-old from Calgary was in Toronto on Tuesday for a joint announcement by the Canadian Olympic Committee and Adidas Canada. The COC signed a four-year partnership agreement that will make Adidas the official high-performance apparel and footwear supplier for the Olympic team.

The trip fell in the middle of a tough training schedule. While the Sochi Olympics are still seven months away, all the hard work is being put in right now.

Humphries splits up her six days a week of training between the gym and the ice house in Calgary. And of course, if need be, on the road.

“Right now is when all the base work gets done,” said the two-time defending world champion. “When the season starts, you want to be about 90 per cent prepared for that February time, and really you’re only adding that 10 per cent in the last couple of months.

“These months in the summer is when you’re building up from zero to 90 per cent. I get Sundays off. The rest of the time I’m in the gym anywhere from four to seven hours a day plus getting therapy on top of it, plus doing a lot of other preparation work as a pilot, preparing equipment, and the mental imagery, all that stuff that goes into it.

“Definitely it is a full-time job, now is when a lot of the work happens.”

Humphries, who captured gold at the Vancouver Games with Heather Moyse, is built to push large objects at high speed. Her thighs rivalled any of the male athletes at Tuesday’s event. She can squat 340 pounds all the way to the floor.

“It’s decent,” she said, laughing. “I work very hard for these big legs and big butt. We train to lift as much weight as possible, but also to be as fast as possible.

“It’s like the Olympic sprinters, but it’s just over 30 metres. And we train like the Olympic lifters to be as strong and powerful — and combine both. It’s one of those sports you don’t know if you’re going to be good at until you try it, because it’s not one or the other, it’s both.”

When it comes to car-pushing, she’ll do 20 or 30-metre intervals. Downhill if she’s aiming for speed — and there’s someone in the driver’s seat. Flat road if she wants an added challenge and “give it everything you’ve got and muscle it out.

“I guess it throws a lot of people off,” she said, laughing. “Chicks pushing BMWs, that kind of stuff. Looks a little random sometimes, but you resort to whatever measures need to be taken in order to achieve what you need to get done for that day.”

Humphries was one of seven Olympic hopefuls who signed sponsorship deals with Sport Chek and Adidas and will be featured in Sport Chek’s “What it Takes” campaign. The others were freestyle skier Chris Del Bosco, alpine skier Erik Guay, short-track speedskater Charles Hamelin, women’s hockey player Meaghan Mikkelson, skeleton racer Jon Montgomery and snowboarder Maelle Ricker.

Humphries said she has had to rely on her family for financial support for most of her career.

“The ‘bank of dad’ has got me through a lot of different times. I owe them a lot,” she said. “But now I can go out and be me every single day and train as hard as I can and do all the mental stuff, and that brings Canada up to the same level that the Germans and a lot of other countries have been on for years.”

Humphries’ close family ties are evident in the amount of space her family members take up in the ink on her skin. She has the faces of her mom and dad, Cheryl and Ray Simundson, tattooed on the inside of her right arm, from wrist to armpit. She’ll add her younger sisters Shelby and Jordan to the outside of the same arm later this year — a sleeve dedicated to her family, she said.

Her left leg is tattooed from waist to toe, and she’s not shy about showing it off. She explained it’s a memorial piece for her grandparents. The words “Because you love me” are written in Icelandic, and there are stars commemorating each one of her grandparents. It evolved over 42 hours on the tattoo table.

“I’m gone a lot and my family is huge for me, I’m a big family-oriented person,” she said. “So to be able to have them with me all the time, even though it’s only as art, it really means a lot to me.”

As part of their deals with Adidas, Humphries and her Olympic teammates will be involved in grassroots events around the country encouraging participation in sport.

The Olympic collection will include compression and workout gear, various outerwear layers for outdoor training and long- and short-sleeve performance T-shirts along with footwear and accessories. Adidas Canada plans to launch the collection at Sport Chek stores around the country on Nov. 7 Canadian Tire and Sports Experts will carry select items starting Nov. 30.

“This deal is huge,” Humphries said. “It’s not just for us as Canadian Olympic athletes, it’s anybody who can come in and purchase it. So that’s just great. They have their dreams, their mottos are the exact same as yours, everyone is just out to be better. Whether you’re a regular person or you’re an Olympic athlete, you’re trying to find that better aspect.”

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version said the sponsorship deal was only with Adidas.

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